as far as prior art goes, there was a search site spidering and doing aggregation back around ‘99… do you remember it? jobsearchengine or something like that.

I did some research for a patent i filed a couple years ago (waste of time i’m sure) and noticed that careerbuilder owns a patent on the job board itself. have a look:

Employment recruiting system and method using a computer network for posting job openings and which provides for automatic periodic searching of the posted job openings

Abstract

A method and apparatus for providing an interactive computer-driven employment recruiting service. The method and apparatus enables an employer to advertise available positions on the Internet, directly receive resumes from prospective candidates, and efficiently organize and screen the received resumes. The method and apparatus further is capable of monitoring employment advertisements for a job seeker and automatically notifying the job seeker when a position for which the job seeker is suitable becomes available. The method and apparatus further enables a plurality of companies to advertise job positions at a single location accessible via the Internet by a job seeker, and enables the job seeker to communicate directly with a company via the Internet if the job seeker is interested in exploring further information pertaining to an available position at that company.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=2&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=careerbuilder&OS=careerbuilder&RS=careerbuilder

I read this interesting just-published article in Business Week. It’s called: Friendster’s Patent Possibilities: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2006/tc20060713_163728.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_today’s+top+stories

Thoughts?

Amitai.

What does this patent say about vertical search overall. Is every possible vertical in danger? Where does the patent office draw the line on what is patent material? Yikes.

PS… GettheJob looks strangely like the old Jobster. I think Jobster should patent that map on the homepage, they did it first.